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Louis Farrakhan (born May 11, 1933) is the highly controversial
leader of the largely African-American religious movement, the Nation of Islam.
Farrakhan was born Louis Eugene Walcott in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
In 1955 he joined the Nation of Islam, inspired by Malcolm X, and took the name Louis X. He headed the Nation of Islam's Harlem Mosque from 1965 to 1975, and became head of the movement in 1977.
Farrakhan has been a prominent voice in favor of racial segregation, based on his belief that African Americans would do better living independently from whites. On January 12, 1995 Malcolm X's daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, was arrested for conspiring to kill Farrakhan. For more detailed information regarding Malcolm X, Qubilah Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan click here: Shabazz vs. Farrakhan.
He has been banned from entering the United Kingdom since 1986 as "someone whose presence is not conducive to good public order" (David Blunkett, 2002) despite several legal attempts to overturn the exclusion order.
He is a classical violinist and considered a career as a clasical musician in his youth. He performed as a calypso singer in the 1950s and released three albums under the name "The Charmer" (leading to his being derisively dubbed "Calypso Louie" by prominent conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh).
Anti-Semitism
Farrakhan has on numerous occasions implied that some Jews are part of a conspiracy to rule the United States and the world. He has suggested that those Jews own the U.S. Federal Reserve and that those Jews control black intellectuals and artists. He has implied that Jews working in the U.S. government maintain dual citizenship with Israel.
Controversy, however, has raged since the first charges of anti-semitism surfaced in the 1980s. One of the most shocking quotes that has been attributed to Farrakhan, and led to him being censured unaminously by the United States Senate, was, "Hitler was a very great man." This particular quote, which has been reproduced timelessly as the heart of the Anti-Defamation League's case against Farrakhan, appears to have been taken greatly out of context, and is, in fact, sarcastic in nature. Farrakhan made this statement in response to a Jewish journalist at the Village Voice referring to him as a "Black Hitler":
"So I said to the members of the press, 'Why won't you go and look into what we are saying about the threats on Reverend Jackson's life?' Here the Jews don't like Farrakhan and so they call me 'Hitler.' Well that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn't great for me as a Black man but he was a great German and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of all of Europe and America after the first world war. Yet Hitler took Germany from the ashes and rose her up and made her the greatest fighting machine of the twentieth century, brothers and sisters, and even though Europe and America had deciphered the code that Hitler was using to speak to his chiefs of staff, they still had trouble defeating Hitler even after knowing his plans in advance. Now I'm not proud of Hitler's evil toward Jewish people, but that's a matter of record. He rose Germany up from nothing. Well, in a sense you could say there is a similarity in that we are rising our people up from nothing, but don't compare me with your wicked killers."
Legacy and Future
In recent years it has been suggested by a number of individuals that the calming of Farrakhan's fiery rhetoric, though occassionally bolstered by the United States's recent wars in Islamic countries, signals a change of direction in the Nation of Islam. It has even been suggested that Farrakhan may be planning to make a move towards the traditional Sunni faith of Islam.
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